The beautiful daughter of Dominick Dunne. Famous actress best known for Poltergeist. A beautiful life gone too soon. Another devastating loss due to domestic violence. The murder and trial would be a GIANT miscarriage of justice.
Dominique was born in November of 1959 in Santa Monica California. She was the only girl born to her parents whom also had two boys. Dominique wanted to be an actress from an early age and studied at Milton Katselas' workshop. She appeared in multiple plays and musicals.
Her first real role was in Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker in 1979. Afterwards she began to have small roles in televisions shows like Hart to Hart, Fame, and Lou Grant.
In 1981, a year before I was born, she landed the role of a lifetime. The role, Dana Freeling, in Poltergeist. The film grossed more than 70 million dollars! Sadly, this would be her only feature film.
Also, in 1981, she met the man that would take her from the world, John Thomas Sweeny. he was a sous chef at a restaurant called Ma Maison. They met at a party and only dated for a few weeks before they decided to move in together. He was very controlling and jealous. He was very dangerous and he tried to keep her from acting and her life in the limelight. It started as it usually does. Emotional and verbal abuse. At one point, he even attacked a fan for no reason for speaking to her in a restaurant. There was also an incident in August of 1982 where he pulled handfuls of her hair out. She was in an episode of Hilly City Blues where she played an abused woman. The makeup department never even had to apply makeup as Sweeny had beat her the night before. Her wounds were real.
During another argument at their home on September 26, 1982, Sweeney grabbed Dunne by the throat, threw her on the floor, and began to strangle her. A friend who was staying with the couple heard "loud gagging sounds" and ran into the room where Dunne was being attacked. Dunne told the friend that Sweeney had tried to kill her, but Sweeney denied the claim and told Dunne to come back to bed. She pretended to comply, but snuck out of the bathroom window instead. When Sweeney heard Dunne start the engine of her car, he ran out and jumped on the car's hood. Dunne stopped the car long enough for Sweeney to jump off the hood and then drove away. For the next few days, she stayed with her mother and at the homes of her friends. She later called Sweeney and ended the relationship.
October 30, 1982, a few weeks after Sweeney and Dunne broke up, Dunne was at her West Hollywood home rehearsing for the miniseries V with actor David Packer. While she was speaking to a female friend on the phone, Sweeney had the operator break into the conversation. Dunne told her friend, "Oh God, it's Sweeney. Let me get him off the phone." Ten minutes later, Sweeney showed up at Dunne's home. After speaking to him through the locked door, Dunne agreed to speak to him on the porch while Packer remained inside. Outside, the two began to argue. Packer later said he heard smacking sounds, two screams and a thud. He called police but was told that Dunne's home was out of their jurisdiction. Packer then phoned a friend and told him if he was found dead, John Sweeney was his killer. Packer left the home through the back entrance, approached the driveway, and saw Sweeney in some nearby bushes kneeling over Dunne. Sweeney told Packer to call the police. When police arrived, Sweeney met them in the driveway with his hands in the air and stated, "I killed my girlfriend and I tried to kill myself." Sweeney later testified that he and Dunne had argued, but he could not remember what happened after their exchange. He claimed he could only recall being on top of her with his hands around her neck.
Dunne was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she was placed on life support. She never regained consciousness. Over the following days, doctors performed brain scans that showed she had no brain activity due to oxygen deprivation. On November 4, her parents consented to have her removed from life support. At the request of her mother, Dunne's kidneys and heart were donated to transplant recipients.
The piece of shit that killed her, practically got away with it. The judge believe that he had no intention of hurting her!!! Are you fucking serious??? He told the officer that showed up that he choked her and didn't mean to choke her that hard....wow. The prosecution had Sweeny's ex girlfriend testify that he was abusive towards her as well. He even perforated her eardrum once and she was hospitalized twice. The asshole jumped up during her testimony and took off running! He had to be taken down! Judge Katz was an asshole and did not even allow Dominique's own mother testify to the things that her daughter can confessed to her about the abuse. He only allowed the jury to hear evidence and decide among Manslaughter and Second Degree Murder.....you have to be fucking kidding me....On September 23,1983 he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Yup, that is it.
On November 7, Sweeney was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter, the maximum sentence he could have received, plus six additional months for the assault charge. At Sweeney's sentencing, Judge Katz criticized the jury's ruling of manslaughter, stating that he felt Dunne's death was "a case, pure and simple, of murder. Murder with malice". The jury's foreman, Paul Speigel, later told the media that he and his fellow jurors were surprised by Judge Katz's criticism and called his comment "a cheap shot". Speigel felt that Judge Katz's criticism stemmed not from their verdict, but from the harsh criticisms he received after the verdict was given. Speigel went on to say that had the jury heard all the evidence, they would have convicted Sweeney of murder.
After the trial, John Sweeney was incarcerated at a medium-security prison in Susanville, California. He was released on parole in September 1986 after having served three years, seven months and twenty-seven days of his 6+1⁄2-year sentence. Three months after his release, Sweeney was hired as head chef at The Chronicle, an upscale restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Dunne's brother Griffin and her mother, Lenny, found out where Sweeney was working and began standing outside the restaurant handing out flyers to patrons that read, "The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne." Sweeney eventually quit his job due to the protests from Dunne's family and moved away from Los Angeles.
In the mid-1990s, Dominick Dunne was contacted by a Florida doctor who had read an article Dunne wrote about Dominique's death. The doctor told Dunne his daughter had recently become engaged to a chef named John Sweeney and wondered if it was the same John Sweeney responsible for Dominique Dunne's death. The man was later identified as the same John Sweeney. Dunne's brother Griffin later called the doctor's daughter and tried to convince her to call off her engagement. Sweeney accused the Dunnes of harassing him and later changed his name. In later interviews, Dominick Dunne said that for a time, he employed the services of private investigator Anthony Pellicano to follow and report on Sweeney's whereabouts and actions. According to Dunne's father, Pellicano reported that Sweeney had moved to the Pacific Northwest, had changed his name to John Maura and continued working as a chef. Dunne's father said that he later decided that he no longer wished to squander his life following Sweeney and therefore discontinued any attempts to keep tabs on him...
Rest in Peace Angel.
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